INDIA IN TRINIDAD

Two years ago, at A Different View book shop, Richard Bolai and Adel Todd were discussing a joint show they wanted to have and I asked if I could put a couple of small pieces in among theirs’, and they said, “Okay,” These are the pieces. The basic idea of the show was India In Trinidad. Our separate associations with India in Trinidad are and have been, intense and deeply personal, as well as general in the same sense of what every Trinidadian experiences of India here on a daily, hourly, basis – politically, culturally, socially etc.. Speaking for myself, I grew up in Palmiste, South Trinidad, before Dewali was ever declared a holiday, among the then still lipe-walled and carat-roofed houses of the villages of Debe and Duncan and Cainan villages, and lived with an Indian man from Woodbrook for many years. My own couple of pieces also came out of the experience of two earlier shows, both Inspired by the Kama Sutra, and some others pieces based on the Krishna story, specifically the Radha and the Gopies episode, still to be completed. Adele was working towards performance and installation pieces, and some other multimedia works, I think, based on how India works in Trinidad, so many times and ways removed from the subcontinent itself. I don’t know what Richard is doing. Well, the whole thing is still in the air, is still that awful thing, a work in progress. We have each of us produced work, a lot of it, but it’s still waiting to come together, to be formatted/framed (in my case) and produced/performed (in Adel’s case) and published (in Richard’s), I think.

So here is some of my work. I’ve opted to show details here because the blog format cannot accommodate the very fine detail of the full pieces, which are actually not that large - the friezes, for instance, are not more than12 x 20 inches, but densely worked in the spirit of Hindu miniatures. The line drawings are complete in themselves. Sometimes I work them further with colour, sometimes not. This is done purely on a whim, if I think the application of colour will amplify or make the picture more complete or finished - finished in the sense of being more polished But there are some who consider colour to be an affectation, an effete redundancy, and sometimes I see their point. So I leave them in the more pristine and pure state of line.

An observation - how strange it is to discover that what you thought were two very separate and different things are really, exactly, one and the same! I’ve been working on a series from the story of Hercules, specifically Hercules and the Daughters of Thespius. It is, visually, the same story as the Hindu story of Krishna and the Gopies - the man/god’s impregnation of a legion of women – though of course the Hindus out-do the Greeks by a couple thousand women. The cultures may be different, but the stories are the same, the psychology is the same. I’ve been told that this is the peculiar dream of all the male side of the gender divide, to have the sexual prowess or ability, as well as the opportunity, to endlessly service a never ending multitude of the fairer sex! Muslims martyrs of course do one better than everyone else, achieving the honour, albeit a mixed and perhaps painful one, for both parties! - of deflowering a legion of virgins in heaven in reward for their sacrifice!